howto

If you have enabled Bitlocker encryption on your Windows client and wondering how far along you are in the initial encryption process this quick PowerShell command will help you.

Steps

The first step is to turn on BitLocker

Next, Right click PowerShell and select Run as Administrator

Issue the following command: manage-bde -status c: to show the status of volume c: on your client. You can omit the volume letter to list all attached volumes.

Issue the above command again will show you the progression of your drive encrypted status. When completed you will notice that the Protection Status will be set to OnFor more info on BitLocker Drive Encryption

In this tech-short we will go over a simple yet effective way to list out the available site templates in SharePoint 2013.

Using the New-SPSite PowerShell cmdlet allows you to specify the name of a template to use. In my case I was unaware of the name of available templates in my SharePoint installation. Using the Get-SPWebTemplate command to produce a list for me.

Steps

Open the SharePoint 2013 Management Shell

The the following command: Get-SPWebTemplate | Sort-Object “Name”

The results are a list Templates which could be used in this environment.

If you wanted to do the same with PowerShell locally or remote the following steps can be taken.

Using templates save you lots of time when it comes to deploying virtual machines. And if you are looking to get a slight edge on your deployments in lab or production using customization specifications may be the way you want to go.

Here are some quick steps to deploy using this method:

From the home page of vCenter Web click VMs and Templates

Right click on the template of choice and select New VM from Template…

Enter the name of your virtual machine guest as you would refer to it in vCenter. Choose your data center and click Next to continue

If you are using clusters, choose your cluster and click Next to continue

Select your data store and click Next

On the select clone option screen choose customize the operating system option; you may also set the machine to power on after creation to start the process which customizes the guest – Click Next to continue

On our last screen we are shown our customization choices. Choose your template configuration and click next

Clicking Next on the confirmation screen start our deployment

And that’s all folks — posted this for a friend with screenshots to illustrate the process.